The Eternal Enemy

Sartre

Part One

MARKOS

1

The grips on the plastic handles were slippery with sweat even though the screamer’s air conditioning blasted him. He tried to keep the muscles in his forearms and his hands from cramping—controlling the screamer was a delicate task and any sudden, jerky move could be his last. The screamer continued its level flight, just missing the carpet of treetops two meters below the belly of the craft. He knew the risks he took, flying this low just under the speed of sound, and he knew he had no choice.

If they caught him, there was no telling what they might do. What Van Pelt might do.

He glanced at the rear viewscreen and saw some mendils take to the air, a line almost a kilometer long, filling the sky like a rooster-tail wake. Their alien bodies disturbed him, spotted and mottled with clashing reds, greens, oranges, and blues, skin stretched so tightly he thought they should burst. And still the sight was more tolerable than looking into Van Pelt’s eyes.

He needed to wipe his forehead on his sleeve, to shut his burning eyes for a few moments, to scratch the tip of his nose. He yearned for the massager bunk, the unit that lulled him to sleep each night, deep massaging every muscle in his solid, large frame. He wanted to feel the ground beneath his feet, to have this insane flight over, to be at rest on the planet’s surface. To have this whole thing done with, Markos thought, to feel a resolution.

It was stupid to run. Stupid, but necessary, he realized. What other choice was there after what Van Pelt had done?

If there were only some kind of safety, some refuge to which he could flee. Still, he had a goal of sorts—distance between himself and the ship, a large settlement of native sentient creatures, the Habers, in which to hide. If he could manage that, he would have time to plan, to think, to help.

Less than two kilometers ahead the trees ended. He could see the expansive yellow plain stretching out to the towering mountains on the haze-filled horizon.

His fevered hope was to find a village hidden on the plain, sheltered by the high weeds. The Habers would be friendly—they knew nothing else. He could set the screamer down a few kilometers from a settlement and make his exit. Yes. Set it down, then adjust the autopilot for a thirty-second delay, have the screamer take off at full throttle. The empty screamer would do a good enough job until it hit the mountains.

If someone were following him, as he suspected, it would buy him the time he needed.

The forest dwindled, disappeared behind him, becoming a low, solid wall in the rear viewscreen. A tone chimed, synchronized with a flashing red light above the detection screen.

Markos knew what the chase screamer looked like—blue like his own, like all those from the Paladin. He had no time to look. This was the horrible confirmation for which he was waiting.

The screamer flew a high course, making it easier for whoever was piloting it to detect his screamer. And Markos knew that if he’d detected the chase ship, the chase ship had detected him.

Markos’s mind split between fighting the other screamer and fleeing, dropping even lower, closer to the ground to evade the chase screamer’s detection devices.

Markos knew what his mistake had been. He should never have confronted Van Pelt. He should have stayed aboard the Paladin and worked from within, talking to the other crew members, showing them how truly insane their captain had become. What kind of xenobiologist was he? How could he help the Habers now?

He had to clear his mind, make a decision—the right one. Van Pelt had probably sent Wilhelm after him. Wilhelm was the best screamer pilot around, capable of staying with just about any maneuver, and just as afraid of shooting down Markos’s screamer as Markos was of shooting down Wilhelm’s. So, then, there was little point in climbing and dueling it out up there, high above this alien world.

The handles eased forward as Markos applied slight pressure, praying his hands wouldn’t slip. He cursed the designer of the control handles—how stupid to leave the plastic smooth.

As the craft lowered, the high grass seemed to bend to either side of the screamer, and then Markos realized he was too low, just above the tips of the grass. His eyes were wide open, paralyzed by the overwhelming sight of the grass speeding toward him. A few seconds of terror made him force his eyes away, glance at the overhead screens, the detection devices, and let go of the right handle long enough to throw a switch putting an added detection circuit into play.

He knew how important his flight was. If Wilhelm managed to catch him and bring him back, there was no telling what Van Pelt would do. And if Wilhelm caught him, the Habers would most likely be history.

Just the slight contact the crew of the Paladin had had with the aliens had triggered off a string of rapid mutations in the Habers. Only their oldest rites were surviving. They had developed sound-speech a few days after the Paladin had landed, dropping their method of communicating through prismatic displays of light. If the Habers weren’t helped, they would mutate toward more human forms. He knew that as they changed physically, they would change culturally, too.

The readouts on the control panel showed that Wilhelm was almost five kilometers behind, right at the detection limit. With a few lucky maneuvers he could make the needed distance.

The radio chirped repeatedly, distracting Markos, its pulsating sound cutting through his ears. He knew it was Wilhelm, trying to establish contact, an attempt to talk him out of his flight.

Good, he thought. Ignore the signal and concentrate on losing him.

A thump from the bottom of the craft tensed every muscle in his body. At this speed, running into the tops of the wild grass could be fatal. He clenched the handles tightly, easing them back ever so slightly, rising above the grass a little more. A tiny grayish-brown pebble in his path grew to monstrous size in less time than it took him to open his mouth to scream.

He yanked back hard just as the screamer struck the boulder.

The space program had been nothing like what he’d dreamed of as a boy, but that never stopped him from dreaming. Blazing rockets, ray guns strapped to hips clad in silver lamé, a beautiful and competent female copilot beside him, rushing headlong through the Solar System at incomprehensible speeds, dashing from planet to planet to help colonists over mysterious plagues and diseases.

Markos had known the difference between reality and fantasy, had known what the space program was really about when he was five, when the first wave of manned exploratory pods had left the Solar System on their long, solitary journeys.

But he still dreamed.

He’d taken the first battery of tests for NASA 2. He’d filled in answer after answer on the exams. He’d been poked and prodded, and he’d wondered whether or not he was doing the right thing by applying. But what else was there for him? It was as close to his dream as he’d ever get.

His parents were dead, his interactions with both sexes strained, bordering on nonexistent. When he did manage to make a friend, Markos latched onto him as if the person were an object or a possession. He always feared the new friend would leave for parts unknown for some inscrutable reason. And they all fulfilled his fears, never staying long enough to tell him why they left.

He’d had only one relationship with a woman, Theresa, and that had ended when she explained to him, If I’m in the shower, you want to be there, too. If I’m dreaming, you’ll want to get into the dream. Give me some room. You’re suffocating me.

He never really understood, so he applied to NASA 2 and prayed they would take him regardless of the realities of deep space. He considered NASA 1 first, but they were limited to projects within the Solar System and overseeing colonization—all mundane chores learned through the training geltanks. NASA 2 was reshaping personalities as well as training minds for their missions, conditioning them to interact on a social and professional level, something that looked extremely attractive to him.

When one of the manned exploratory pods sent back a message from Tau Ceti, NASA 2 moved quickly, starting to build a larger ship to follow up what they thought had to be contact with an alien race.

With Theresa gone, all the Earth held was a slow, boring, lonely life. With NASA 2 he saw the chance to do something, to explore, interact, live.

Live.

He opened his eyes.

A Haber stood a few meters away, watching. It was 120 centimeters high, humanoid, with well-defined features. The outermost layer of skin on its face was transparent; the upper portion revealed small beads of organic crystals, clustered like clear pomegranate seeds, traced by a thin network of connecting fibers. There were fewer crystals in the Haber’s face than he’d expected—most probably another mutation toward sound-speech, away from cold-light generation.

It had small hands, complete with opposable thumbs and jointed, stubby fingers. More mutations. Its body was covered with a gray, skinlike layer, an integral part of the creature. From its small size, Markos figured it was in or nearing its final cycle, something that made little sense to him.

The Paladin hadn’t been on this planet long enough for a mutated Haber to be this old.

They were alone in the darkened room with walls of carved stone. There was a faint musty smell in the air. Markos did his best to ignore the odd, painful jolts shooting through his body as he tried to push himself up into a sitting position. His head pounded and the room spun. He fell back to the bed of native grass and tried to orient himself, tried to overcome the nausea. From what he could make out, they were in an underground cavern or a cave.

He concentrated, trying to remember where he was, where the Haber had come from, why he felt ill. He closed his eyes and the pain increased. An image of an immense figure took shape in his mind, towering over him, the image and thoughts temporarily blocking out the physical pain.

It was Van Pelt.

The pain rushed back in a wave.

He could see the way Van Pelt had paced before the whole crew, hands clenching and unclenching behind his back. His sandy hair was long and shaggy, unlike the shorter, almost military style he’d worn over most of their journey. The top two buttons on his gray worksuit were open, his feet bare, his gray eyes sunken, rimmed with black circles.

I need more information before I reach a decision, Van Pelt said.

The crew remained silent. They had quickly learned not to offer information or opinions anymore. Markos had seen Van Pelt’s degeneration start while they were still orbiting Gandji. The artifact had been there, just as the pod had reported, and Van Pelt had started to change. The way he pinched his bottom lip when deep in thought, the way he jiggled his foot when he crossed his legs, the way he cracked his neck by pivoting it around and around—his mannerisms seemed to be taking him over, as if he were fighting some inner battle and losing.

The pressure on Van Pelt had increased after they’d landed and encountered some of the Habers. Markos had led the examination of the enigmatic creatures, and with every new discovery he related to Van Pelt, Van Pelt only seemed to get more and more upset.

Only one other ship had made contact with the Habers, and that contact had occurred a long time ago. The manned pod had never returned to Earth and had never sent a second message.

Well? Anybody?

Still nothing.

Van Pelt had grown more haggard, had aged too quickly even though he had received the geltank treatments.

Markos? You’re the closest thing to an expert we’ve got. What about these creatures? What are our real chances?

All eyes turned to Markos. He licked his lips, glanced at Van Pelt’s wild eyes, then at the deck. This was insane. Well, Captain, we’re, uhm … we’re not really in a serious situation. The Habers pose no threat to us at all. They don’t have the technology that could have put that artifact in space around this star—

A threat! Van Pelt said.

"No, Captain, no threat. They’re more peaceful in their philosophy, though definitely human in intelligence."

So you say, Markos. So you say. But you still haven’t answered. Just what are our chances?

I’m not sure I understand, Markos said, stalling, trying to formulate the safest way possible to answer.

Will they fight? Yes or no? It’s that simple. Your opinion?

Will they? From everything Markos knew of the race, the Habers would never fight. Say yes, he told himself. Say yes, and maybe Van Pelt will fear a real confrontation, come to his senses, reestablish contact with NASA 2, report what he’s discovered. Maybe he’ll drop this ridiculous plan and follow procedures. But then again, he might not. He’s strange enough to try anything. Strange enough to use the slightest hint of a threat as a justification for wiping them out. They have no weapons and they wouldn’t know how to use them if we gave them some. If I tell him they won’t fight, he might spare them. He might stop seeing them as a threat.

Well? Van Pelt demanded.

I’m not sure, he said.

A gleam lit Van Pelt’s eyes as he stopped pacing and stared at Markos. Then they won’t fight?

There’s no way to be sure.

Not sure?

Markos shrugged. They’re Habers, Captain—not people.

Not sure? You’re the one who’s spent the most time with them, dragging them in and out of the lab, running tests, wasting our resources on these things, these creatures. Don’t you realize what you’ve done? You’ve shown them the layout of our ship. We’re in constant danger now. There’s no telling when the attack will come.

Only because it somehow fits your fears, Markos thought. Only because it makes it easier for you. You won’t have to deal with these creatures.

Well? What about the rest of you? Van Pelt asked. With Markos leading the campaign—he should be able to whip up something horrible and appropriate—we can handle them easily.

A vote followed, a mockery, a sham ruled by their fear of Van Pelt’s insanity. Everyone knew why the vote was requested: Van Pelt could see which crew members bore watching. Markos proved to be the only one foolish enough to vote against Van Pelt. If the others had stood up to him, had united against his plan, he could have been handled. NASA 2’s training had proven out—the psychologists had programmed the xenobiologist to feel for the creatures, while the crew was programmed to care about getting back, getting on with it, following the Captain’s orders. Sure, Markos thought, only what happened to the Captain’s programming?

No one mentioned Markos’s having taken a stand. No one went out of his way to avoid him, but no one talked to Markos unless he’d been addressed. No one was willing to take the chance.

Markos’s duties increased in quantity and decreased in quality; he had to stand additional long, boring watches. What little free time his duties allowed was spent in the bunk massager as he attempted to sleep. He never had time for the geltanks.

Van Pelt got stranger as the first months on Gandji passed. He seemed plagued by doubts and uncertainty about the Habers but for one point: He was certain they posed a real threat to Mankind. The crew walked on tiptoes, staying as far out of Van Pelt’s way as possible, while Cathy Straka, the only other person with xenobiology training, made extremely slow progress carrying out Van Pelt’s plan.

Markos was kept away, but he knew what was going on. A biological solution was much preferred by Van Pelt. Not even he was insane enough to try to burn the entire race out of existence. Engineering a little virus, one that would multiply quickly and easily, was a much easier and cleaner way of handling the problem, as Van Pelt called it.

Straka knew enough about the Habers’ biology to attempt a mass genocide. She had been there for most of the examinations and had witnessed them reproducing. Three Habers were required for mating—there were no real sexes until mating had begun. One Haber in the group performed as a flow-bridge. The flow-bridge was the most delicate and important of the three during mating. The two Habers would stand on either side of the neuter Haber and establish physical contact with it. Chemical components and genetic materials flowed from the two Habers by an osmoticlike pressure and met in the flow-bridge, mingling, mixing together. From what Markos could surmise by viewing the process through every instrument available and studying the holograms he made, the central Haber, the flow-bridge, could then consciously alter the genetic material, make any genetic-engineering changes it felt were necessary, then push the altered, fertile materials back into the other two Habers. Gestation was fairly quick—three months—and the two impregnated Habers gave birth to between one and three offspring each.

Markos knew that damaging the chain at its middle point, the Haber acting as flow-bridge, could wipe out the entire race. But he also realized they were mutating rapidly and he hoped their system of reproduction might be changed by the time Van Pelt got his plan into motion.

The following day, while Markos was standing watch, he spotted a group of first-cycle Habers, an odd combination of youthful bodies and graceful movements. Van Pelt appeared by his side, weapon in hand.

Saw them approaching on the screens.

Markos nodded. Just a young group, curious about us.

You’re mistaken. Ask Straka. She’ll tell you this is a scouting party, no doubt carrying concealed weapons.

Markos was about to laugh at the Captain’s attempt at humor when he saw Van Pelt raise his weapon to the firing position.

They’re not armed! Markos said.

Sure they are. See the one on the end there? he asked, flicking the weapon toward it.

Markos looked but saw nothing irregular.

Not only are they armed, but they’re closing in on us.

Van Pelt’s weapon emitted a bright, tight beam of emerald light, and the Habers toppled to the ground, sliced in half one by one, in a few horrifying instants. The grass in the area smoldered. Van Pelt returned to the ship as the breeze carried the scent of charred meat to Markos’s nostrils.

He was sick to his stomach.

There had been talk, rumors, probably started by Van Pelt, of taking over and exploiting the planet once the Habers were gone. He’d made noises about cutting in all the crew members for shares. Markos no longer cared if the rumors were true. He’d seen enough to know Van Pelt meant business. He threw down his weapon and ran for one of the screamers, then headed for the mountains at top speed.

And then Markos remembered the rest and sat up on the bed in the cavern. Memories rushed back in one tremendous, painful surge—the boulder! The impact and explosion, then blackness. But he couldn’t have survived that crash.

He started to tremble.

What’s— he started to ask but stopped when he heard his own voice. It was a rough, gravelly rasp—bubbling and liquid, totally different from what his voice should have been. He was shocked, and a hot flash, like a river of molten metal, ran diagonally through his chest.

He looked at his hands. They were different too. Deformed. Ugly. Wrinkled and cracked and the wrong kind of skin and mottled and spotted with reds, greens, and oranges and blues and he could see right through the skin and into his arms and legs and chest.

He screamed a frothing, gargled, piteous wail.

2

Markos waited. It was what he did best. He figured that if there were ever prizes awarded for having the most patience, he would probably win one. Waiting. That was all NASA 2 was about.

They’d told him he would get a chance to meet alien creatures. They told him he would get the chance to fly in the first and only faster-than-light ship ever developed. They told him he could go to Tau Ceti and find out what happened to that missing guy, the one who disappeared in that pod.

But all they had done so far was stick Markos in a geltank and have their computers throw all different kinds of imaginary aliens at him to see if he were xenophobic.

He sat on the edge of his bunk, looking across the small room at Jackson, one of the others handpicked to make the trip on the Paladin. How do you select people to man a ship that might blow up the instant the f-t-l drive is engaged? Do you pick expendable people? Or qualified ones? And what if they don’t come back?

Markos picked up the magazine he’d placed on the bedstand, the one he’d bought in the spaceport on Earth. The voice chips printed on the magazine’s cover had said something that caught his attention, something about an exposé and NASA 2. It was some fifty years after the pod had left, but the arrival of the telemetered information from the pod made this guy, Jacob Galley, news again. It also implied that the NASA 2 selection criteria were not exactly what might be expected.

Markos read it.…

Jacob Galley started life like most city children, but somewhere in the process of personality development, something special happened. His parents had always considered themselves lucky to be able to afford a private apartment in a good neighborhood, even though they earned the right by each working two jobs. The other four families who lived in the apartment considered themselves equally fortunate. Fifteen people shared meals, entertainment, and living space in a happy communal spirit until Jacob was four.

It started innocently enough. Jacob took to hiding under the furniture instead of playing in the common areas, locked in his own little world. And there were times he would sit in dark closets, huddled in a corner, eyes closed. Everyone thought it a little strange but since his odd behavior violated no laws, no formal complaints were registered. If his parents had had the extra money, they could have sent him to a clinic to be cured, but the extra money was simply never there.

As he grew, he went to school like all other children. He had a good time there, sitting in his private cubicle, headset plugged into the teacher, absorbing knowledge and developing understanding. He stayed later than most children, in no rush to get home to spend time with his extended family. By the time he reached his teens, Jacob’s personality was set.

He had developed into a loner, and yet people liked him well enough. He was an attractive young man with a genuine, disarming smile, soft-spoken and intelligent. He just didn’t socialize well. He graduated a chemical engineer, near the top of his class, and his parents were proud. The fourteen other people he lived with were proud, too, and they all attended his graduation. His real problems started after he left school, though.

Work didn’t afford him the time or opportunity for privacy, and his living quarters were even more crowded and difficult for him than his family’s apartment had been. His desire for solitude was interpreted as unhappiness by the people he lived with and the people he worked with. Each group did its best to pull him out of his quiet retreats into their own realities. Jacob appreciated their well-meaning intentions and realized he was fighting a losing battle.

When the company for which he worked landed a contract with the government, the opportunity for a transfer to the space colony arose. He was well qualified for the job, and the people he worked with recommended his transfer with great enthusiasm thinking it was a solution to the problem of how to deal with him. His eagerness to go into space was due solely to the living arrangements aboard the colony—he would have to share his living quarters with only three other people.

While Jacob lived his quiet life, NASA 2 was created. NASA had grown too large to be properly managed; their responsibilities included the space colony, attempts to mine asteroids, and other projects limited to the Solar System. NASA 2 was formed to explore deep space, to venture out beyond the gravitational field of Sol and determine if there really was any life out there.

NASA 2 searched for two years and three months until they found just the right people to man their deep-space probes. The psychologists had designed a model of the perfect personality, a personality capable of handling the elastic years of solitude, the enforced sense of mission, and the tremendous responsibility that went along with the mission’s potential.

When they met Jacob Galley, they knew they had a potential match.

He had been working on board the space colony. He was found hiding in the lower levels, cramped into a tiny locker, when his roommates reported him missing. The doctors who examined him saw that his disorder was easily treated and filed a standard fitness report. NASA saw the report and brought it to the attention of NASA 2.

NASA 2 ordered a few intensive treatments in the geltanks. Their doctors regressed him, unwound his experiences, then regressed him some more, but when they brought him forward, they eliminated the negative associations of being a loner, eliminated the social stigma. The doctors took care to keep the things that made Jacob different.

While he was in the geltank, completely submerged in the fluid vat, the psychologists modified him to bring his personality closer to the ideal. They provided him with a reinforced sense of self-importance and memories of people, places, and things that had never existed for him, experiences that would have been impossible for him but necessary to survive the empty years that lay ahead.

There were lies, false memories of training sessions in NASA 2’s nonexistent underground complex on the Moon. There was a memory of a man created within Jacob, a Brian Taggert, a man who was Jacob’s roommate in this fiction the psychologists wove. There were interactions with people of all nationalities, sexes, and physical abnormalities added to his memory. There was a theoretical and practical knowledge and understanding of all human language, a knowledge burned into his synoptical connections. In the years of solitude Jacob was submerged in the ship’s geltank, the ship could use these memories to stimulate him, to ward off the inevitable return of solitude.

By the time they were finished with Jacob, his new memories fit him comfortably. When he stepped out of the training geltank, he felt as if he were the same person he’d always been.

Jacob Galley was perfect for the mission NASA 2 needed done, for the years of solitude and enforced self-discipline.

Six sectors of space demanded exploration and explorers. There were planetary bodies circling nearby stars, and these needed to be visited